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On this day: July 15

2012: The video for South Korean pop singer Psy's song "Gangnam Style" debuts on YouTube. The video would eventually become the first on YouTube to exceed 1 billion views, spawning parodies and a dance craze imitating Psy's often humorous and bizarre choreography along the way.

2010: BP stops the flow from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill into the Gulf of Mexico after 85 days by using a 75-ton cap lowered onto the well earlier in the week. The total discharge from the spill was estimated at 4.9 million barrels, or 210 million gallons.

2009: "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," the sixth film in the movie franchise, is released in theaters. It proved to be an instant success, breaking the record for the biggest single-day worldwide gross of all time with $104 million. In five days the film made $394 million, breaking the record for highest five-day worldwide gross in history. With a total worldwide gross of $934 million, it became the eighth highest grossing movie of all time and the second highest-grossing film of 2009, behind "Avatar."

2006: The full version of Twitter is introduced publicly. The online social networking and microblogging service, which enables users to send and read short 140-character text messages, quickly became one of the largest social media platforms in the world.

2003: Tex Schramm, the original president and general manager of the National Football League's Dallas Cowboys franchise, dies at age 83 in Dallas, Texas. Schramm helped build the expansion Cowboys into a dominant team and was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1991. He's also known for modern NFL innovations such as instant replay, the 30-second clock between plays, extra-wide sideline border, the referee's microphone, and the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders.

2003: AOL Time Warner disbands the computer services company Netscape. The Mozilla Foundation was established on the same day to ensure Mozilla could survive without Netscape.

2002: John Walker Lindh, the so-called "American Taliban," pleads guilty to supplying aid to the enemy and to possession of explosives during the commission of a felony. Lindh, a United States citizen who was captured as an enemy combatant during the United States' 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, would later be sentenced to 20 years in prison.

1997: Serial killer Andrew Cunanan guns down fashion designer Gianni Versace on the steps outside his Miami, Florida, home. Versace was the fifth, and last, victim for Cunanan, who used the same gun to commit suicide eight days later.

1996: MSNBC, a 24-hour all-news network, makes its debut on cable TV and the Internet. The station was founded as a partnership of Microsoft and General Electric's NBC unit.

1992: Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton claims the Democratic presidential nomination at the party's convention at Madison Square Garden in New York City.

1988: The action blockbuster "Die Hard," starring Bruce Willis and Alan Rickman, opens in theaters. In the role that made him a movie star, Willis stars as NYPD officer John McClane, who is called into action to save his wife and several others who are taken hostage by German terrorists pulling a heist during a Christmas party at a high-rise office building in Los Angeles. The movie made $140 million at the box office and spawned a franchise that is up to four sequels so far.

1986: Lionel Richie releases the album "Dancing on the Ceiling." The album would peak at No. 1 on the U.S. Billboard 200 album chart and sell more than four million copies.

1983: The Nintendo Entertainment System, which would become the best-selling game console of its time, is released in Japan as the Nintendo Family Computer, or Famicom. It went on sale in North America more than two years later on Oct. 18, 1985.

1979: With the onset of the energy crisis, U.S. President Jimmy Carter gives a nationally televised address where he characterizes the greatest threat to the country as "this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation." The address came to be known as his "malaise" speech, although Carter himself never used the word in the speech.

1976: Actress and model Diane Kruger, best known for movies such as "Troy," "National Treasure" (pictured) and "Inglourious Basterds," is born Diane Heidkrüger in Algermissen, Germany.

1975: The Apollo–Soyuz Test Project features the dual launch of an Apollo spacecraft and a Soyuz spacecraft on the first joint Soviet-United States human-crewed flight. The flights launched within seven-and-a-half hours of each other and docked on July 17, allowing the two mission commanders to exchange the first international handshake in space through the open hatch of the Soyuz. It was both the last launch of an Apollo spacecraft, and the Saturn family of rockets. It was also the last U.S. space mission until the first space shuttle flight in April 1981.

1973: Actor Brian Austin Green, best known for the TV show "Beverly Hills, 90210," is born in Van Nuys, California. Green has also had regular roles on the TV shows "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles," "Anger Management," "Smallville" and "Desperate Housewives."

1968: The soap opera "One Life to Live" premieres on television. The show would last for 44 seasons before going off the air on Jan. 13, 2012. It returned as a web series in April 2013.

1967: Adam Savage, the special effects designer and actor best known for co-hosting the TV show "Mythbusters," is born in New York City.

1963: Model and actress Brigitte Nielsen, best known for movies such as "Red Sonja," "Rocky IV" and "Beverly Hills Cop," is born in Rødovre, Copenhagen, Denmark.

1961: Actor Forest Whitaker, known for movies such as "Bird," "Good Morning, Vietnam," "The Crying Game," "Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai" and "The Last King of Scotland," is born in Longview, Texas. He has also appeared in the TV series "The Shield," directed movies such as "Waiting to Exhale," "Hope Floats" and "First Daughter," and won an Academy Award for Best Actor in 2007 for portraying Idi Amin in "The Last King of Scotland."

1960: Actor Willie Aames, best known for his roles in the TV series "Eight Is Enough" and "Charles in Charge," is born Albert William Upton in Newport Beach, California.

1959: The steel strike of 1959 begins with 500,000 steelworkers striking, shuttering nearly every steel mill in the country. The six-month strike ended with workers with the United Steelworkers of America winning minimal wage increases. It also lead to significant importation of foreign steel for the first time in United States history, which replaced the domestic steel industry in the long run.

1956: Guitarist and singer-songwriter Joe Satriani, known for his instrumental rock guitar compositions, is born in Westbury, New York. Satriani has worked with artists such as Mick Jagger, Deep Purple and Alice Cooper and is currently the lead guitarist for the supergroup Chickenfoot.

1954: The Boeing 367-80, the prototype for both the Boeing 707 and C-135 series, flies for the first time. It was the only one ever built and was used to demonstrate the advantages of jet aircraft for passenger transport.

1952: Actor Terry O'Quinn, best known for his TV roles on "Lost," "Millennium," "666 Park Avenue" and "Gang Related," is born in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan.

1951: Jesse Ventura, the politician, actor, author, veteran and former professional wrestler who served as the 38th governor of Minnesota from 1999 to 2003, is born James George Janos in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

1950: Arianna Huffington, the author and columnist who founded the news website The Huffington Post, is born Ariánna Stasinopoúlou in Athens, Greece.

1948: Gen. John J. Pershing, who led the American Expeditionary Forces in World War I, dies of coronary artery disease and congestive heart failure at the age of 87 at the Walter Reed General Hospital in Washington, D.C. Pershing was the only person to be promoted in his own lifetime to General of the Armies, the highest rank ever held in the U.S. Army.

1946: Singer-songwriter Linda Ronstadt, the 11-time Grammy winner best known for songs like "You're No Good," "Blue Bayou," "When Will I Be Loved" and "It's So Easy," is born in Tucson, Arizona.

1944: Actor Jan-Michael Vincent, best known for his role as helicopter pilot Stringfellow Hawke on the 1980s television series "Airwolf," is born in Denver, Colorado.

1935: Football player and actor Alex Karras is born in Gary, Indiana. Karras played with the Detroit Lions in the National Football League from 1958–1962 and 1964–1970, but is best known for his roles in the movie "Blazing Saddles" (pictured, right) and the TV sitcom "Webster." He died from complications caused by kidney failure at the age of 77 on Oct. 10, 2012.

1916: In Seattle, Washington, William Boeing and George Conrad Westervelt incorporate Pacific Aero Products, which would later be renamed The Boeing Company. Pictured is a replica of Boeing's first plane, the Boeing Model 1.

1913: Country music singer-songwriter and guitarist Cowboy Copas, whose hit songs included "Signed Sealed and Delivered," "Candy Kisses" and "Alabam," is born Lloyd Estel Copas in Blue Creek, Ohio. Copas remained popular from the 1940s until his death in the March 5, 1963, plane crash that also killed country stars Patsy Cline and Hawkshaw Hawkins.

1910: In his book "Clinical Psychiatry," Emil Kraepelin gives a name to Alzheimer's disease, naming it after his colleague Alois Alzheimer.

1904: Russian writer Anton Chekhov, considered to be among the greatest writers of short stories in history, dies of tuberculosis at age 44 in Badenweiler, German Empire. He's also known for his plays "The Seagull," "Uncle Vanya," "Three Sisters" and "The Cherry Orchard."

1876: George Washington Bradley of St. Louis Brown Stockings pitches the first no-hitter in major-league baseball history in a 2-0 win over the Hartford Dark Blues. Less than a year earlier Joe Borden of the Philadelphia White Stockings of the National Association had pitched the first no-hitter in professional baseball history, but the earlier no-hitter is not recognized by MLB today.

1870: Georgia becomes the last of the former Confederate states to be readmitted to the Union.

1869: Margarine is patented by Hippolyte Mège-Mouriés in France. He had won a contest held by Emperor Napoleon III to find a substitute for butter used by the French Navy. His formula included a fatty component that mixed to a pearly luster, so he named his product after the Greek word for pearl: margaritari.

1850: Francesca S. Cabrini, the first American citizen to be canonized by the Roman Catholic Church as a saint, is born in Sant'Angelo Lodigiano, in the Lombard Province of Lodi, then part of the Austrian Empire. After coming to America in 1889, she founded the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart, a Catholic religious institute that offered support to Italian immigrants to the United States.

1815: Defeated at Waterloo and finding escape to America barred by the blockading HMS Bellerophon, Napoleon Bonaparte boarded the British ship to surrender and seek political asylum. He would eventually be exiled to the island of Saint Helena in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Africa.

1806: United States Army Lt. Zebulon Pike begins an expedition from Fort Bellefontaine near St. Louis, Missouri, to explore the south and west of the recent Louisiana Purchase. Along the way the expedition would discover the mountain that would be named Pikes Peak and found the headwaters of the Red River.

1799: The Rosetta Stone, a tablet with hieroglyphic translations into Greek, is found in Egypt by French Lt. Pierre-François Bouchard. The stone provides the key to the modern understanding of Egyptian hieroglyphs. British troops defeated the French in Egypt in 1801, and the stone came into British possession. Transported to London, it has been on public display at the British Museum since 1802.

1606: Painter Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, generally considered one of the greatest painters and printmakers in European art history and the most important in Dutch history, is born in Amsterdam. He's seen here in his 1659 self-portrait.

1099: After a siege lasting more than a month, Jerusalem falls to the Crusaders. After capturing the city, the Crusaders massacred most of Jerusalem's population.

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